Liberals have been opposed to Voter ID legislation in North Carolina since its introduction this session. They cite figures stating that one million voters do not have a state-issued identification. They use statistics from the NC Department of Motor Vehicles that say the cost to issue an official ID would cost $20 per person, or $20 million total.

Enter Joseph Coletti of the John Locke Foundation. Writing on the Locker Room blog, Coletti cites research from a collegue who says

Issuing free photo IDs to voters could cost North Carolina less than $30,000 a year.

Could the NC DMV been wasting tax dollars? Could they be inflating the cost of producing State-issued IDs?

3 Responses to “Voter IDs – Too Expensive for North Carolina?”

Compared to the cost of a single election challenge in court due to fraud, that’s a bargain!

However, Dr. Coletti assumes that if NC charges $10 for the IDs then the marginal cost of an ID is probably half that. That would be a good guess if the State of NC was actually a business, making money, but it isn’t. NC probably doesn’t make anything at all on those IDs. So a better estimate of the cost of issuing these IDs is probably $10 x 6000 = $60,000.

But that’s still a tremendous bargain, compared to the cost of a single election challenge in court.

The liberals aren’t really concerned about the cost. They just like election fraud, because they know it is their voters who commit most of it, and they want them to get away with it. If the liberals really cared about the cost of elections and election-related expenses, they wouldn’t insist on having things like school board elections when there’ll be minimal turnout, in hopes that they can swamp the election with NCAE and SEIU members. Those extra elections cost a lot!

Great post, Penny. This type of legislation has passed muster in other states, but liberals argue that forcing people to actually PAY for something, constitutes a sort of poll tax, like back in the Jim Crow era. Lord knows we can’t have people paying for what they use. It’s bad enough we ask them to identify themselves to avoid voter fraud!

I know I may be called every name in the book for suggesting this outlandish idea, but why can’t people who do not have a picture ID already, PAY for the cost of one, themselves? Shouldn’t citizenship cost you SOMETHING, people? Why has our great country become a place where people expect to be GIVEN everything? Twenty dollars for an ID that you use for years doesn’t seem to be a hardship to me! Sheesh…